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Monday, November 26, 2007

Reflections on an Eight-Year War

Author: Andrew E. Mathis

It's no surprise to anyone who knows me well that CODOH's Jonnie Hargis is my arch enemy. The reasons for this are varied and several, but rather than take on technical and historical issues that my colleagues here intend to during CODOH Week, I'll take on the man himself and just take a brief look at some of the biggest whoppers over the last five years.

Read more!One of my favorite gambits by Hargis has to do with the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads responsible for machine-gunning at least a million Jews in the Soviet Union, Baltic states, and eastern Poland beginning on June 22, 1941. Hargis likes to claim that the people shot were partisans and commonly identifies these people as "terrorists." Here is a typical example.

Now imagine if you were to ask Jonnie Hargis this question: Would you call Palestinians — not flying any flag, wearing any uniforms, or organized in any rank hierarchy — defending their homeland by firing on Israeli troops "terrorists"? I can answer that question for Jonnie definitively: He would not. So what we're seeing here is a double standard on a couple of levels. First, the Palestinians are allowed to defend their country, but the Soviets were not. Second, Palestinians should not be summarily executed for defending their homeland, but Soviets (particularly Soviet Jews) should be.

This issue, incidentally, gave rise to this classic post by Hargis, in which he suggests that, rather than forming partisan units and carrying out sabotage against invading Nazi forces, the Soviets should have just surrendered. Then, adding insult to injury, he makes a comparison to the Iraq War. So we have another double standard: Soviets are not allowed to defend their country, but Iraqis can.

1 comment:

Hargis: "The Iraqis are resisting Zionist inspired aggression against their culture"

This of course is a fuckwitted comment on several levels. Saddam's regime was Sunni: most Iraqis are Shia. Nobody has forced the Muslims to convert to Christianity or renounce their cultural values. The Russians were fighting an invading regime that had promised to starve the "useless eaters" in the cities.